Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
SSD in MBP
- Thread starter Antowns
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you don't have much stuff or you have a lot of money, you can replace the internal HDD. Makes more sense to replace the Optical and make it into an external, since the Optical is very rarely used anyways. I did this, and now I have a 640GB hard drive for my stuff (iTunes library, documents, photos), but a lightning fast SSD for my OS and apps. As you can see from the last week's announcements, optical drives are dead. Yay! finally! If I need to install something, I can always pull the USB optical drive out of the drawer and use it for a few minutes.
I suppose this is very true, I'll consider all of my options before making any decisions. Is it easy to replace the optical drive?
It's certainly easy if you follow the steps. One thing that bothers me is that these data doublers are quite expensive. The cheap ones from Amazon won't fit the computer (if you want to you have to break a plastic piece which I wouldn't even think about doing it) and the right ones from OWC are around $100. Yes, if you have a lot of money to spend it on, then order a 1TB 9.5mm Samsung HDD and maybe 128 or 256 GB SSD.
I know this is common place nowadays...so please forgive my SSD/Optibay ignroance, and sorry for the slight thread-jack. I thought that when people installed the SSD in the Optibay that there were issues smoothly booting from it vs. installing the SSD in the factory HDD position. As in it was more than just "system preferances > startup disk > select SSD > reboot" to get it to properly function as the OS installed drive. Am I wrong? Is this no longer an issue or is it an issue for certain drives?
I personally had a flawless installation & setup so i guess its YMMV. Also, i got the $15 one from amazon, and snapping off the rear piece (which is just clipped in) is definitely worth saving $70.
Rip... any DIY's around for the SSD in optibay swap? And what plastic braket did you use... I can't seem to find anything besides the more expensive solutions like MCE's.
Here's the one I have. It doesnt come with instructions, which is why many people gave it low ratings, however the 5 star ratings have instructions, so just follow those. As far as getting your laptop open and whatnot, ifixit would be the place to go.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Not particularly, but getting the screws back into the Optibay is a PITA, since they are very small, and like to fall off of the torx bit. I have my own torx drivers for Apple laptop work, which made it bearable, but still annoying. It took me an average of 10 tries each for two of the less accessible screws, but I ended up getting them in OK. Each of the failed attempts I had to fish them out with a magnetic screwdriver.
I wiped the hard drive and installed fresh on the SSD, and no problems since. I actually used the hard drive from the old machine since it was a Western Digital, and the new one was a POS Toshiba. The Toshiba is now in the Blackbook, which is just for Firefox basically, so I won't be mad when, not if, the Toshiba drive bites the dust. That complicated it a little bit, but the installation of SL was still just fine. Upgrade to Lion was smooth as well.
MCE and OWC are the only two reputable ones there. You are putting this thing in a $2K+ machine, a $100 bracket to mount a $250+ SSD in shouldn't be much of an issue. The MCE one also comes with a USB case for your Superdrive, which is great, even though it is the cheesiest case it is physically possible to make, and has no front. I figure it will spend 99.99% of its life in the bottom of a drawer, so it's good enough.